This week The Chronicle of Higher Education published an advice column focusing on the role of college faculty in teaching character over grit.

For me, that should not even have to be said, not simply because I would agree in general with David Gooblar's view, but because I have always had a negative view of grit.

For someone growing up in West Virginia in the 1960's and 1970's, grit was a pejorative term for an uncouth person (a distinction among hillbillies, I guess, if one were to claim all West Virginians were hillbillies). "Grit" was used to describe the kid who wore farmer's overalls to school, who listened to Lynyrd Skynynd, who chewed tobacco. I always assumed that it was a universal badge of contempt. As with many of my childish views, I have abandoned such stereotypes as I have come to embrace the diversity of all.

However, the frequency over the last few years in education to talk about "grit" as something positive, as the determining characteristic between successful students (those with grit) and unsuccessful students (the gritless), has made me wonder if my association from my childhood was universal at all. Or, were we simply going to have to accept two versions of the word with dramatically different definitions (sort of like "awful," or "screw," or, let's face it, now, "trump". Wow, didn't expect all three of those words to align so perfectly.)?

It was then that I confirmed that "grit," the slang as I had known it, was mostly used to refer to a southerner, which makes sense, I guess, for West Virginians to freely adopt it, given that we are prone to promote our wisdom in succeeding from Virginia before the Civil War.

That doesn't mean I won't twitch a little when I see throughout Gooblar's article references to the new "grit" that elevates it way past where I want my grits to go. Gooblar characterizes, quotes, or links to all of the following references to this new "grit," and that 15-year old me can't help but protest:

Benefits of "grit." (Up and until 10 grade, the only benefit of the pejorative grit is for immature kids to find easy targets for their ugly need to socially stratify.)